"With ABC deleting dynamite gags from cartoons, do you find that your children are using explosives less frequently?"

— Mark LoPresti

In an example of the nerfing of violence, almost all firearms in animated cartoons made since the late 1970s or early 1980s, if they appear at all, will be radically different from real guns, either in form or in function. Energy weapons are a popular choice.

Sometimes it gets explained — but usually, not.

Several reasons for this have been theorized:

Changes in American gun culture, akin to those that made things like smoking and drinking alcohol an increasingly rare phenomenon in American media.† Despite restrictions on the availability of guns in America being loosened quite a lot since the 1970s, the proportion of the American population who actually own guns has dropped by over a third in that same period. Interestingly, the number of guns in private hands did not go down during that time period.

Imitability. Shooting someone with a bullet is an imitable act which might result in negative publicity, but a kid can't find his Dad's laser rifle and zapfry his buddy. Yet.

Higher leeway on how much damage it deals and how it is portrayed. It is easy to accept an action hero getting blasted away by an energy beam and then jumping back to his feet, but if he got shot with a bullet, then we'd have to deal with the fact that he has a physical object lodged in his chest — or if the bullet were sufficiently powerful, that he has part of his chest lodged in a physical object behind him. Conversely, when heavy property damage is called for, it's more believable to have someone blast through a brick wall with a "laser beam" than with bullets.

The Too Soon trope. Usually when a real life tragedy involving people getting killed with guns happens, American media will often edit or redo anything in which gun violence is prevalent out of respect for the victims, sometimes by banning an episode that has gun violence and most times by editing it so the guns aren't realistic.

Note that this is usually limited to bullet-firing weapons. More destructive weapons like RPG's may still be seen in works using this trope, despite (or perhaps because of) the increased difficulty in obtaining them. In rare cases, it will have large guns fire actual bullets, but still no realistic small arms.

This trope manifests in several ways:

When characters who would be expected to own guns — such as policemen — don't have them, or don't use them in cases which they would be expected to do so.

When most or all of the guns in a particular universe are energy-based or use Abnormal Ammo, regardless of the owner or the universe's particular technological level.

When a firearm looks and acts like a real firearm, even including parts which make sense for bullets but not for lasers, but whose ordnance still looks or sounds like lasers. Inversely, when an unrealistic-looking gun fires actual bullets.

When a work which previously featured realistic guns is altered to make them less realistic, or eliminates them altogether.

This philosophy has sometimes extended to cartoons from previous decades or those imported from other countries. In general, most production houses have (under pressure from various media watchdogs who believed cartoon violence stimulated real violence) eliminated or altered anything and everything that looked like a real gun from their cartoons. Similarly, networks have gone back and Bowdlerized classic cartoons to remove firing guns and, in some cases, casual use of explosives. The reasoning behind these sometimes bizarre substitutions seems to be the belief that if it doesn't look like a real weapon, the poor child's psyche won't be warped and he won't have the desire to use a real weapon on someone else.

This trope is a fairly cyclical one, with guns going from "acceptable" to "not acceptable" and back again in the span of a handful of years, and sometimes within the same show. Whether or not it appears also depends greatly on a particular show's creator and how willing he or she is to fight for realism. A handful of exceptions seem to exist; Elmer Fudd-style double barrel shotguns and Tommy Guns seem acceptable regardless of what stage in the cycle everything else is at. Also, cartoons set in The Wild West still use realistic looking guns because of it being a famous historical time period.

Examples

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Anime & Manga

In the first few episodes of 4Kids' One Piece dub, guns would occasionally be replaced with a sillier-looking equivalent. One shot of a standard flintlock pistol seen in the OP universe was heavily edited into something that looks more like a hammerhead on a spring.◊ (The weapon changed back to a gun in a long shot and a few other frames that 4Kids missed.) Simultaneously, other guns would be edited or recolored to look less realistic — Navy soldiers' rifles were changed to resemble super-soakers, for example — but would still explicitly shoot bullets.

In the Krieg mini-arc, a gun that shot spikes was changed to shoot "poison suction cups". But when the spikes were flying through the air for a few frames they were unedited, and they still hit the ground with a metallic "clank".

In the flashback to Luffy and Shanks's origin stories, Shanks is held up point blank with a gun to his temple and he casually points out that the man holding the gun is in danger of a backblast if his skull causes the bullet to shrapnel, just to show how badass he is. In the 4kids version the man is holding a popgun, although Shanks's lines remain mostly unchanged. Shanks's man shoots the would-be shooter dead and they didn't bother changing his gun, but left in a comment that it was full of blanks and that the other man simply fainted.

Which ironically makes the scene considerably less family friendly, as it unintentionally delivers the message that guns are perfectly safe to fire at people when you're firing blanks out of them; anyone with even a basic knowledge of gun safety can tell you that it is never safe to even pretend to fire guns at people, up to and including when they're not loaded with anything at all (As an added twist, this was actually the message that the scene was originally meant to convey, with Shanks informing the bandit threatening them that he shouldn't play around with guns unless he was prepared both to kill with one and to die by one).

Kaya threatens Kuro with something kind of resembling Usopp's slingshot. Which makes a rattling sound suspiciously similar to a gun when she trembles.

The dub of Digimon Tamers slightly modifies the names and sound effect of Gargomon's attacks (essentially done with a Gatling gun in the original).

Beelzemon, on the other hand, got to keep his realistic guns and CGI Matrix-esque bullets, though there were still laser sound effects.

The Japanese Self Defense Forces shown were carrying real guns (apparently the Howa 89). Again, only the firing sounds were changed. Not to mention the police officers, who also get to draw their weapons.

In one occasion, the police officers had added dub lines to assure the viewer that the guns weren't actually loaded.

In Digimon Data Squad, RizeGreymon's bullet sounds were changed to laser sounds, even though he was still shooting from a gun.

Oddly, the name of the attack was still "Trident Revolver".

Also in Digimon Data Squad, BomberNanimon, originally a giant bomb, attacked the amusement park. In the U.S., he was changed to Citramon, a giant orange, and a living homage to Don Pachi.

An interesting example: The Digimon Revolvermon is basically a giant revolver barrel with limbs and a cowboy hat. While the English dub changed his name to Deputymon, his appearance and attacks were not altered at all (probably because, if they erased his gun, he would look more like a human than a Digimon).

Puppetmon brandishes a real firearm throughout his main episode (wherein he kidnaps Takeru). It was digitally erased in the dub, with Puppetmon threatening T.K. with... nothing in particular (not that a Mega Digimon actually needs a gun to pose a threat to someone).

This was edited much less in Canada (Gundam SEED aired at 9PM or later on Fridays) — mainly editing out the over-graphic deaths had by some "extras" (such as from the radiation weapons — swelling and popping), and toning down a bit of the (somewhat-infamous) Kira/Flay encounter.

One fan theory is that the gun edits were intentionally ludicrous: Bandai and CN both realized that the fans would see right through the edits, but it still had to be done, so they were made silly-looking to give viewers something to laugh at.

Not just the broadcast version, but the English Dub period (even on the DVD) replaced the firing sounds of the head vulcans of various Gundams in Mobile Fighter G Gundam to sound more like rapid-fire lasers. You wouldn't want kids shooting people around with their own head-mounted rotary guns.

Both the Yu-Gi-Oh!card game and TV show have monsters that wield or resemble guns edited into lasers... inAmerica!. The most notable example of this is the monster called "Barrel Dragon", which could be described as resembling several guns welded together in Japan (whether this counts as Truth in Television is arguable). An exception is the "Ancient Gear Soldier" in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, which uses a submachine gun-arm - it can be argued this was just because editing it would have looked ridiculous.

Several guns are left intact however, but are slightly redesigned to look less like real guns. One particular trap card features an old fashioned flintlock, in the Japanese version, that was covered in gold ornaments for the international release.

There's also the henchmen who had their guns removed and were considered threatening because they were pointing at someone. This was parodied several times in Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series, which was made with the edited footage, where the Mooks were clearly holding edited-out guns:

Mook: I told you we should've used the regular guns, but NOOOOooo, we had to use the INVISIBLE guns because they're magical and ooh and ahh...

The Abridged Series also subverts this joke when the main characters get trapped in a 4Kids base, and wall turrets extend out of a wall. Kaiba sarcastically comments about how 4Kids is going to use magic bullets that send them to The Shadow Realm, which Joey follows up with the suggestion of harmless rubber bullets. The turrets then proceed to fire real bullets.

A later episode included a goon holding Grandpa at gunpoint. The editors had apparently learned their lesson from the above example: the Mooks just weren't intimidating armed with only their fingers. They hadn't learned it well enough, however, as they replaced this guy's gun with... a slingshot.

In the Japanese version of Yu-Gi-Oh 5Ds, some character wield realistic-looking guns, but to remain child friendly, these guns shoot "lazer beams" in one arc, and in another arc in the next season, six-shot revolver style guns shoot "Stun Cannons". To be fair, 5Ds does take place in the future, and in one scene the laser beam completely dismembered a man's arm.

A painful example of this trope can be found in the Edited for SyndicationToonami dub of Outlaw Star, in which guns were edited to become lasers, but almost every scene showing Gene buying bullets stayed in the show.

Zatch Bell! (a.k.a. Gash Bell) has bizarrely inconsistent censorship. In several episodes, automatic rifles are edited to fire lasers and feature large metal bulbs along the barrels. In others (namely, the episode "Danny Boy"), guns are not censored at all, even when they are fired at — and hit — Danny. However, in the very next episode, a pistol is edited to look like it's made of Green Rocks and fire glowing green bullets (clearly shown as such in Bullet Time) with laser sound effects, even though those particular bullets were blocked by a magical shield without hitting anyone. The only discernible reason for the inconsistency is that the latter gun was aimed at a girl.

Sgt. Frog's weapon nut Giroro is especially noticeable in that his low-ordinance weapons (e.g., his trademark barrelless handgun) don't actually seem to use bullets, despite being treated as if they do. Perhaps justified since they're not from Earth.

In the anime version of the manga Reborn!, Reborn's gun is colored green and is actually a shape-shifted form of his pet lizard, and the special bullets it fires transform into energy before they can hit and power-up Tsuna (with the bleeding from the shots removed too). Similarly, Lambo's grenades are colored purple. Oddly enough, the other guns in the series remain untouched. This however was probably done in order to give the show a standard transformation sequence and the Lambo thing because it's funnier that way.

Also, instead of shooting himself with his Ten-Year Bazooka, Lambo now leaps inside of it. Kind of odd...

An interesting reversal: in the English dub of the Dirty Pair OAVs (the 10-episode ones) the lasers have had their sounds changed to sound like guns (specifically Kei's blaster has a sound reminiscent of a Desert Eagle). This was due to there not being a Music & Effects track to dub over, so a completely new one had to be made. They still fire laser blasts, however.

The names of some battlechips, the universe's weaponry, were also altered or changed entirely if they had specific words in them. Notable changes include Sword to Cyber Sword, Mini Bombs to Mini Boomer, Shotgun to Blaster and Cannon to Mega Blaster. Strangely enough, the upgraded versions of the Cannon weapon, Hi-Cannon and Mega Cannon, retained their original names.

Several cuts were made in the English dub of Sonic X. For instance, several military troopers holding Sonic and his friends at gunpoint shot real bullets in the Japanese original, but were changed to lasers in the dub, while the weapons themselves still looked explicitly like real firearms.

This becomes even less believable when lasers that were previously guns are shown being shot around in a Space Station takeover during a flashback of an event which took place fifty years previously. Because of course, they had lasers in the nineteen-fifties. And space stations.

In Transformers Armada, Demolishor's missiles were frequently shown to stay in place but fire missile-shaped lasers. Of course, it does provide an explanation for the usual "we can see he's only got four, so how come he's been blasting away all day and never runs out?" problem that some Transformers have. Most weapons fire appears to be lasers, but Cyclonus has more than once told an enemy to "eat lead".

In Fairy Tail one goon of the Naked Mummy Dark Guild is seen using a shotgun loaded with magic bullets. In the anime it was changed to a more toy-looking rifle.

In Pokémon, Oficer Jennys DO have have guns, and they arent even censored most of the time.But they'd just rather have fire-spewing attack dogs tackle the bad guys, which is obviously much safer. Even when a "wild" Jenny appears with only a talking bird as a Pokémon, she uses...well, pretty much bowling balls. The bad guys prefer to make their Pokémon do the fighting as well, though that's a lot cheaper and easier than using a gun. The one episode that had a character with a gun got bannedalmost worldwide, even though no one was shot with it. However, giant mecha and battleships firing a barrage of missiles are apparently just fine, even though most Team Rocket robots fire nets, energy beams or glue considering they want to steal and not hurt Pokémon.

Cat Planet Cuties both averts and plays it straight. While a lot of real guns are used, the vast majority of time the main good guys use catian weapons, which have both melee and ranged forms that are specifically designed to not harm organic matter. In both cases, getting hit with catian weapon simply causes clothing to disappear, or can apparently vaporize a tank without harming the men driving them. Lots of Fanservice abound when the female characters get hit with it.

In episode 60 (54 in the DiC dubbed version) of Sailor Moon R, Chibi-Usa points a gun at Usagi's forehead, telling her where the Silver Crystal is. It was later revealed that it just a toy gun. This was cut out in the dubbed version.

Double subverted in Nichijou: Misato is a Tsundere of the highest order, who doesn't just punch people when she's embarrassed. She shoots them with several weapons (This is Played for Laughs, of course). Her arsenal is fairly realistically rendered, and actually does quite some damage, as her weapons are able to destroy the scenery around her. However, it still comes off as this trope, as the characters she does shoot are Made of Iron, to the point that they only end up with smoke emitting from their bodies, and occasionally slight bleeding.

Comic Books

When Gladstone Publishing reprinted various Uncle Scrooge stories that had first been published in Europe, they had to redraw some scenes involving firearms, leading to scenes of Uncle Scrooge apparently being threatened by having a finger waved under his beak.

While not a direct use of this trope, it is subverted in one story of The Punisher 2099. The Punisher runs across a female copycat vigilante of him, who prefers to kill crooks using painful methods and weapons. The Punisher looks down on her for this, saying that he prefers clean kills and doesn't take pleasure in killing. She sneers at him because he uses lasers. According to her, lasers burn into flesh and boil the blood. The wound always go septic and the nerves rarely regrow. They may look nice in the "Holo-dramas", but they're just as nasty as what she uses.

Averted all over the place in Paperinik New Adventures: the main enemies and the hero uses laser (justified, since their technology is way more advanced), but the normal humans all use guns with regular bullets.And use them a lot. Did we mention the protagonist is Donald Duck?

This is typical of Italian Disney stories (one of the reasons it's the Darker and Edgier division of Disney), in which characters casually wields and use realistic firearms, especially in those produced in the Sixties and Seventies (where Scrooge would wield a double-barreled sawed-off shotgun, cops would shoot at criminals with .38 Special and .357 Magnum revolvers, and Donald Duck has been shown packing a Colt M1911). Since then the presence of realistic guns has dimished, but you can still find numerous realistic guns in the 'classic' Paperinik stories (in fact that's where Donald's Colt comes from), the Double Duck saga (that shares most of the staff with Paperinik New Adventures), Mickey Mouse Mystery Magazine (yes, Mickey Mouse), and W.I.T.C.H. (at least those times police officers are involved). And considering the Italian fans are rather cynical, what would you expect?

Comic Strips

Dilbert: According to Scott Adams in his book Stick To Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain!, he drew a comic that had Dogbert get a job as a police negotiator, and showed a police officer shooting a suspect that was coming out to surrender. Since the police officer was shown firing a gun, this comic got nixed by the editors. Scott Adams changed the panel to just having the "Bang" sound effect, but this didn't get past the editors either. Finally, Scott Adams said "Screw it" and turned the gun into a donut...that fires bullets. This one was accepted.

Films — Animation

In All Dogs Go to Heaven, Carface's tommy gun is turned into a tommy gun... that fires red lasers. How they got advanced laser weaponry in 1939 is never explained. Oddly enough, they leave in the part where they violently gun down Charlie in front of the apple cart.

Fievel Goes West is a mixed example. While there are some revolvers, those only get aimed at inanimate objects or aimed so badly they don't come close to hitting anyone. When the cats (and one dog) have their shoot-out, it's with slingshots that use bullet and ricochet sound effects.

Disney averts this trope in its films far more than it plays it straight. Guns appear in a really mind blowing number of their animated films, even in settings where it would have made perfect sense not to have them, such as Beauty and the Beast and The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Films — Live-Action

In the Star Wars spin-off film Ewoks The Battle For Endor, the Ewoks fight goblinlike creatures that live in a Dark Ages castle, get dinosaur-looking aliens to pull their wooden wagons that use log-ends as wheels, and fight with laser pistols — despite the fact that the technical manuals clearly state that projectile weapons still are used in the Star Wars galaxy.

The 20th Anniversary Edition of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (in)famously substituted guns held by police with walkie-talkies. In Australia, so much was "altered" in the 20th Anniversary Edition that the studio was legally required to resubmit it for classification — where it was given a harsher rating of PG from its original G, due to "supernatural themes". If they had simply released it without any changes, it would have retained its original G rating from 1982. So… yeah. This was parodied mercilessly in the South Park episode "Free Hat", where all of Steven Spielberg's thugs carry walkie-talkies in such a manner that suggests they were "originally" carrying guns. They cock their walkie-talkies to threaten the boys ("Hold it! Don't make me use this walkie-talkie!"), and Spielberg himself at one point steals one and threatens to "shoot". The same episode has an edited version of Saving Private Ryan, featuring US soldiers being graphically killed by machine guns, while returning fire with walkie-talkies.

The Live-Action AdaptationG.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra kinda uses it: while the Joes employ live ammo (including a Gatlingglove for Powered Armor), the Cobras instead use Concussion Rifles that fire potent beams. Then again, much is made of the fact that M.A.R.S. has been developing exotic weaponry, and the concussion rounds are extremely effective in certain situations; a near-hit will still cause a large enough impact to disable or wound an ordinary soldier.

Clockstoppers has guns that fire liquid nitrogen paintballs instead of bullets, pulling targets out of hypertime instead of killing or wounding them.

Captain America: The First Avenger has the HYDRA soldiers using energy rifles powered by the Cosmic Cube. The allied soldiers do still use real guns, though for obvious reasons they are less than effective....

At the beginning, the Hydra forces use a mix (most likely they simply have not been able to make enough of the energy rifles at the time) and it is justified since it is shown while a bullet can kill a soldier, the energy weapons will VAPORIZE any person it hits.

Literature

The Random House novelizations of X-Men comics have an... odd view of what is or isn't to be censored. In one story, what was a bullet from a normal gun is changed to an "energy ray" from a futuristic blaster... but an alternate-future Wolverine's zapping by a Sentinel in "Days of Future Past" was described as follows:

But even as Wolverine spend toward his target, the Sentinel reacted — a split second faster. From his robot hand came a huge beam of blinding, deadly electricity. It zapped Wolverine in midair, and shredded the skin off his body. "Eyearrrgh!"The most fearless X-Man let out a horrendous, bloodcurdling scream and then he fell to the ground. The blast destroyed him and left behind only a smoking adamantium skeleton. Wolverine was dead.

Invoked and lampshaded in Divergent. When war breaks out, the Amity sector is not given real guns, but stun guns that can just take people down.

Zigzagged by the Worlds of Power novelization of Bionic Commando. Guns are clearly mentioned repeatedly in the book, but the one on the cover (a copy of the game's box art) has been edited out. The hero, Jack Markson (this was before they established him as Nathan "Rad" Spencer) is shown using martial arts, bionic arm gadgets, and 'stun darts' against his human enemies, but the book has no problem with Jack gunning down robotic enemies with real bullets. At the same time, he very clearly blows up some of the story's main villains with a rocket launcher and attempting to incinerate one with a heat ray.

Live-Action TV

Power Rangers almost always edits its Super Sentai footage to turn bullets (and during the later Disney era, missiles) into lasers.

In a particularly egregious example, in Power Rangers S.P.D., such an edit was made in a Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger scene with the Omega Ranger catching a hail of bullets fired at him by the bad guy with his bare, supersonic-powered hand; a physical impossibility in its unedited form, it's rendered even more ridiculous afterwards when he catches laser pellets.

Also, the red Dekaranger's personal weapon was a pair of magnum pistols, rewritten in SPD to fire laser beams. Many fans, in defiance of the Rule of Cool, insist that bullets "look cooler" than lasers, prompting suspicions that Power Rangers fans have never actually seen bullets. In their defense, the CGI-enhanced bullets in Dekaranger did look pretty cool. But not like real bullets.

The SPD Megazord stayed unedited for a while, but eventually we lost the shots where it was seen ejecting shell casings from its gun. The Blue Ranger's Zord eventually got lasers painted over its gunfire too.

The Disney era got progressively crazier about it until all weapons were getting the laser edit. In the Nick era, so far guns become red lasers and everything else gets left alone.

The trope isn't always in play. Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue had a Megazord that had a giant gun that fired bullets (supersized bullets), and Power Rangers Time Force had Mooks that used "advanced machine guns" that fired bullets... which were useless against the Rangers anyway.

Episode 3 of Power Rangers Samurai has the monster shoot a gun with no hole in the gun barrel. There are a few, blink and you'll miss them, times when you can see there was a few bumps on the gun that were around the hole in the original Samurai Sentai Shinkenger episode.

Averted in Power Rangers Megaforce season two, which uses Gokaiger footage. As of episode two, no edits to all the lead that gets slung around in Gokai.

Kamen Rider Decade features a very minor version. In the original Kamen Rider Agito G3-X's weapons fired bullets and rockets. In the AgitoAlternate Universe visited in Decade the G3's Gatling gun shoots red laser beams. Very slightly justified as well since it is an, well, alternate universe equivalent and thus not the original armor.

Super Sentai is odd about its use of this. Of course, we're dealing with magical/futuristic tech, and so lasers aren't as wildly out of place as in most series that use this trope. Anyway, sometimes the same weapons will shoot beams one day and bullets the next. Sometimes beams will go Matrixy and you'll see a bullet inside. Sometimes things that really, really shouldn't shoot bullets will (ancient technology, swords, claws, etc.) Sometimes the weapon will have beamless muzzle flashes and then we see the target dodge beams, or the weapon will fire beams but there will be nothing but Bullet Sparks when the target is shown. One time, Doggie Kruger deflects a flurry of red beams fired at him by the villain of the week, and then points down; we see he's gotten the bullets that have not looked or sounded like them for the whole two-parter to land in the shape of an X. And at one point (the Dekaranger version and SPD version are exactly the same), we get a "tink!" and Bullet Sparks off of a Monster of the Week's new armor. He turns to see Blue pointing at him with his weapon - which he fires again, only this time it's a blue beam.

Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger did finally largely pull an Author's Saving Throw on this. One murderer used a realistic revolver, which was specifically cited as "using old-fashioned bullets"; by implication, all the futuristic weapons use some sort of "charged up" Abnormal Ammo. It's still unclear whether they can shoot a "pure" beam, though.

Even the Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger Deka tribute episode gets in on the action. You know you're back in the world of Dekaranger when the same weapon can't decide what sort of ammo it'll be shooting from one shot to the next. (Elsewhere in Gokai, no such thing happens; the Gokaigers' usual pistols are always bullets except when the keys are inserted for a Final Wave.)

The Tribe: The Technos have wristbands that stun people (there is a kill setting, but still no physical damage). Previously there were explosives, Danni's crossbow, and a lot of people fighting with sticks... but no guns.

Averted on VR Troopers on one occasion. Usually the guns we'd see would be this trope, but one bot called Gunslinger used a very realistic gun. This was handled by making him into a cowboy from The Wild West that talked like Clint Eastwood.

Music

The Wheatus single Teenage Dirtbag was mutilated like this for radio airplay. The line "Her boyfriend's a dick, he brings a gun to school was seriously censored to Her boyfriend's a {[strange scratchy noise}}, he brings {[even stranger scratching noise obscuring words}}'' .

The music video to Naughty By Nature's Hip Hop Hooray has several men pull up in a car and point guns at another group. The guns turn out to all be water guns.

Despite the video for the Beastie Boys's "Sabotage" parodying the hell out of 70s movies, the police have no guns, just empty holster. Given this the same song with an f-bomb in the first thirty second, this presumably came from a combination of ease-of-filming (as the video is set outside) and Rule of Funny.

Similar is the video for Judas Priest's "Breaking the Law", where the band stick up bank tellers by threateningly pointing guitars at them.

Pinballs

By default, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines ships with a gun grip and trigger to launch balls and fire at in-game targets. Operators have the option to replace the grip with a fire/launch button "for sensitive locations".

When the Gerry Anderson series Stingray was turned into a movie by mashing a few episodes together, the scenes where the various craft fired torpedoes at each other were changed so that laser beams were fired instead.

Same creator, same principle, different series: when some episodes of Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons were mashed together to create a movie, the missiles fired by the Mysteron saucers were turned into lasers, and shoddy-looking ones at that. It is possible that this was simply an attempt to make them more alien, but either way it failed at whatever it was trying to do.

The franchise has this - when it feels like it. Games like Sonic Heroes will have enemies fight you with bright orange laser guns, whereas Shadow the Hedgehog has you and many of your enemies using regular old bullet-firing murder-devices.

Forgotten character Fang the Sniper was originally meant to have a revolver for a weapon. The revolver itself was never used in any games (despite some unused sprites of him holding it), but for his playable appearance in Sonic the Fighters he was given a cork-shooting popgun.

On the whole, though, many of the games have realistic firearms instead of using lasers, even though it would completely make sense (for example, many of Eggman's robots have been equipped with machineguns).

Donkey Kong 64 loves this trope. Each Kong gets their own unique firearm that all use Abnormal Ammo. Donkey Kong's gun fires coconuts, Diddy's pistols fire peanuts, Tiny's crossbow fires feathers, Lanky spits grapes out of a straw, and Chunky's bazooka fires pineapples. After the final boss fight, Funky Kong finishes off King K. Rool with a bazooka that fires a boot directly at his head. Interestingly, in the beta of Donkey Kong 64, Diddy has realistic pistols in place of his peanut popguns. Chances are they were just there as a placeholder until they came up with a cartoony weapon that was better suited to the colorful Donkey Kong Country universe, but they might have also been changed to keep an E rating.

Ratchet & Clank's weaponry is generally done in a retro sci-fi style to make the series more kid-friendly. Then of course, there's all the Denser and Wackier weapons like the Morph-o-ray, Groovitron and Mr Zurkon.

Occurs within the novelization of Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars. Within the novel, the regular infantry of Nod (the bad guys) are armed with energy weapons. While Nod do have lasers within the game, they're limited to special forces, while the regular mooks get conventional weapons. The trope is almost invoked by one soldier wondering "Where the hell'd they get-" after seeing the lasers. The change isn't because of censorship, but as a result of a continuity error.

In the expansion to Tiberium Wars, the Black Hand subfaction can upgrade their basic mooks to use lasers. That said, they are Elite Mooks, since the Black Hand has been referenced across the series as Nod's elite.

Inverted (sort of) in Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan. At first the cops use real guns to fight rampaging robots which don't do anything. Then they figure out their weakness and attack with water guns instead, which are very effective.

Kingdom Hearts is rather inconstant with this. Clayton’s old fashioned gun was untouched in Kingdom Hearts, but in Kingdom Hearts II the pirates’ muskets were edited to look like crossbows (but still sounded like muskets and had muzzle flashes), while the various flintlock pistols were untouched. Odder still, Xigbar's Special Attack in which he merged his two “arrowguns”, which look nothing like real guns, to create a sniper rifle, which was altered to... well, the same guns not merging.

There is a part in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl when Will puts a gun to his head and threatens to kill himself if his friends are not released. In Kingdom Hearts II, he leaps to the edge of the ship, just like the movie, and threatens his own life...while pointing the gun at the ground. You probably don't want to encourage children to point guns at their owns heads, but at the same time it was a bit jarring to anyone familiar with the movie.

Oddly enough, 358/2 Days is the only game where Xigbar is shown merging his arrowguns into a sniper rifle, perhaps because it’s easier to edit a cinematic attack than an in game one.

The HD rerelease of Kingdom Hearts II and Birth By Sleep allowed Xibgar to use his sniper rifle, but kept the odd editing of the Pirates's world.

Nintendo's Famicom Light Gun originally featured a realistic revolver design in Japan◊. When it was converted into the NES Zapper overseas, it was given a "futuristic" redesign to comply with U.S. safety standards. Later versions of the Zapper even changed the color of the gun's coating from its original gray to orange due to revised standards. This also applies to all light gun peripherals that had been exported from Japan to the overseas market. Light guns such as Sega's Virtua Gun (renamed the Stunner overseas) and Namco's GunCon were originally sold in realistic-looking black coating in Japan but were repainted orange for the overseas market to distinguish them from real guns.

Sort of an in-universe example: Commander Keen used rayguns in his first games, the Invasion of the Vorticons trilogy (and the opening story of Keen Dreams), then switched to a Neural Stunner for the rest of his games. This was likely due to how 1.) all the Vorticons Keen slaughtered were mind-controlled instead of evil and Keen didn't want to risk ending up responsible for the annihilation of an alien race again, and 2.) stunned enemies with stars circling their heads are more amusing to look at in a game that pioneered DOS as a gaming platform.

Chex Quest: The opening movie makes it clear that conventional weapons can pass right through the slime-based phlegmoids, so the protagonist must use "zorching" weapons to return enemies back to their home dimension. The opening cinematic specifies that the zorchers have been specifically modified to work this way, but their original use, and why they've been left all over Bazoik for the player to collect, is left unclear. (Fanon is that they were mining tools.)

Night Trap. "Weird Eddie", one of the Martin's neighbors, invented a laser gun in order to combat them and the augers. Interestingly, the SCAT team has real guns. (Though no one is shown being shot on-screen.)

In the book and film versions of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry kills the basilisk by stabbing it through the roof of its mouth with the Sword of Gryffindor. In the video game, however, the sword is not a melee weapon at all and instead fires magic lasers from its tip. How much it is this trope and how much it was to make an interesting boss battle is up to debate.

Kid Icarus: Uprising plays with this, with the staves resembling sniper rifles and the Flintlock Staff being a real gun with nothing done to hide it. They also have swords that shoot normal bullets because the weapon is "Old Fashioned."

In Pirate 101 the guns are sparkthowers. Rather than shooting bullets they shoot balls of magic electricity that stun opponents into submission. They range from flintlock pistols to a long rifle that functions as a primitive sniper rifle to the one that is a cannon that can shoot a ball of electricity with enough force to knock back the target.

Splatoon more or less plays like a multiplayer deathmatch shooter game, but you use paint guns instead of normal guns. Shooting opponents simply sends them back to their team's base. And shooting up opponents isn't really the main goal anyway — it's to cover the arena with as much of your team's color of paint as possible.note In Turf War

Toys

LEGO have a "no present-day weapons" rule — so it's okay for Minifig swords and laser guns, but not Glocks or anything like that. Presumably in about twenty minutes they will have to recall all the laser guns and allow muskets.

This is why even BIONICLE, easily the most violent Lego franchise ever, is restricted to energy weapons and Abnormal Ammo.

Bionicle went so far as to use the words Murder and Thieves for one of their lines, and made it very clear that Anyone Can Die in their post-Inika Story arcs (whereas in all other stories the characters would get comically blown to pieces, but survive nonetheless since they can just rebuild themselves). The closest they've ever gotten to a real weapon was the Cordak Missile Launchers, which functioned like a Gatling gun (but it only held 6 ammo rounds, possibly because they were explosive in-story) and even then it was far too comically short to be taken seriously.

However, there are pistols and tommyguns in the Batman and Indiana Jones sets, albeit still cartoony. And there's always third-party Brickarms to supply your minifigs with firearms.

The Pirate Lego sets all included muskets and flintlock pistols. Not "present-day" per se, but still firearms.

What about the Western sets? They had revolvers that looked fairly realistic (for Legos) shotguns as well as 19th century rifles. see here

IIRC the "present-day" means "World War II or later".

The "present day" rule was actually relaxed at some point - no form of realistic gunpowder weapon was allowed at first, even obviously obsolete ones.

This is the main gripe of the technic fans, as these older consumers know full well that Lego has the ability to create realistic, working tanks and military aircrafts, and they would be awesome. However due to the above rule, we will never see them officially released. Lego has no problem releasing fictional, futuristic tanks however.

This is also why the Lego Star Wars line is considered by all to be their best selling line, as they can make movie-accurate guns and war machines without violating their rule. In particular the old technic lines and the larger hobbysets are much well received by the older demographic, who long for realistic tanks, but get close enough with a movie-accurate scale Millenium Falcon.

Transformers: G1 Megatron's original altmode was a realistic Walther P-38◊, though roughly 2/3 actual size. Subsequent releases in America had the toy partially or completely recolored with neon parts to look more like a futuristic laser (though some countries with more restrictive gun laws were not subject to this change). Future incarnations of Megatron had a combat vehicle or spaceship altmode instead, though this could be due to the main villain become an immobile object to be held by The Starscream, of all bots, was less than awesome.

Some states actually allow gun toys that look like real guns so long as they have the orange cap. However, Hasbro isn't going to make versions for each state and then deal with what happens when someone takes one with them on vacation, etc.

Averted by Masterpiece Megatron, which again became a realistic Walther P-38, but this time about half again actual size so the resulting robot mode would be on scale with Masterpiece Convoy / 20th Anniversary Optimus Prime. However, it was a Japanese-exclusive release, and thus subject to different laws.

Referenced in an episode of Bonus Stage: Phil is able to tell that Joel has been possessed when he holds up a bank with a gun in his left had because Joel is right handed. Unfortunately, Matt Wilson accidentally drew the gun in Joel's right hand, so when he corrected it, the gun became a stupid looking, brightly colored gun.

Also, in the episode where Joel censors the show "to fit the burgeoning five-to-seven-year-old market", the word "gun" is overdubbed with "blaster" (although it's still clearly a real gun).

In "Saturday Morning Watchmen" the criminal's gun he shoots at Nite Owl with fires lasers.

Justin Pierce: My comics hero, Steve Purcell, once got a cartoon deal with FOX in the 90s. He quickly learned that censors didn't dislike violence so much as they disliked accessible violence - the sort of violence kids could easily mimic. Thus the more exaggerated it was, the safer you were. If your knife fight doesn't work, simply replace the knives with atomic bombs. It's a good rule to live by.

G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, is probably the first example that comes to mind when thinking of this trope. While there initially existed assorted evidence that the guns weren't meant to be perceived as lasers—more-or-less realistic sound effects, boxes labelled “ammo” with visible bullets—the show eventually came to acknowledge the lasers for what they were, including details such as power settings and whatnot. This effect actually made the Joes' laser-specialist characters, Flash and Sci-Fi, utterly useless in the cartoon. That said, the lasers don't even seem to be that particularly effective, since in the incredibly rare occasion someone gets hit, they tend to get back up fairly quickly.

G.I. Joe: Renegades continues the tradition, but makes it clear the lasers are something new and exotic by M.A.R.S. Industries, and that they have just recently begun to replace bullet-based guns—one episode even features Flint remarking on the difference, warning his men to “watch the recoil! These are plasma-pulse rifles, not your daddy's M16's!” Flashbacks to the Joes' early days feature them carrying regular guns, but this is an exception, as nobody else actually appears to own a firearm: when Zartan and his gang threaten a small town in his intro issue, nobody, not even the town's sheriff, appears to consider using firearms, instead resorting to improvised weaponry when the Joes train the citizens to defend themselves.

While guns weren't all that prominent in Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, when they did show up, they would inevitably be lasers—even in episodes involving time travel or references to the wild west. The only realistic firearms in the show appeared in a particular after-show Sonic Says segment, which warns about the dangers of real guns.

The short-lived Mighty Orbots had an extreme example of this. In a cartoon about a futuristic Combining Mecha team battling giant monsters and alien mad scientists led by an evil energy computer, ABC's Standards and Practices dictated that none of the weapons could bear any resemblance to gun-shaped objects. The end result? Battles waged with giant wedges and cones of light flashed from arms, legs, eyes, and whatever else was convenient. Writer Buzz Dixon noted that the show appeared more futuristic as a result.

Used in Gargoyles: while the first few episodes portrayed "particle beam" weapons as being accessible only to the very rich (such as millionaire David Xanatos), everybody else carried and used real guns. However, in the episode "Deadly Force", mob boss Tony Dracon steals a shipment of these and sells several of them on the street. Thus, the writers establish that there are energy weapons available for criminals to use if they know where to look. In the end, who used what depended on which group one belonged to: members of the N.Y.P.D. (including co-star Elisa Maza) would uniformly use real guns; high-end baddies such as Xanatos, Demona, and Thailog heavily favored lasers; and anyone else would use whatever the not-always-consistent animation felt like displaying.

Superman: The Animated Series and Batman Beyond both took an approach similar to Gargoyles. Energy weapons were rarer, more expensive, and generally more threatening than ordinary guns, more so in the former than the future-set latter. Both shows suffered from inconsistencies, though; sometimes sound effects did not match the visual (both ways, not always biased towards beam weapons), sometimes the same weapon design would be recycled as both beam- and bullet-firing between episodes, and sometimes the exact same weapon, carried by the same character, would do both over the course of an episode.

The 1990's X-Men animated series was a serious offender. Everything shoots "lasers". Machine guns shoot lasers. Tanks shoot big red beams that somehow arc and hit the ground like heavy artillery. Also typical for this trope, the series had the anti-mutant supremacist group stockpile what were clearly regular munitions, despite constantly using laser weapons onscreen. Even sewer-dwelling edge-people have lasers! The animated version of the battle between Storm and Callisto for leadership of the Morlocks was fought with what looked like double-bladed lightsabers (in the original comic book, it was a knife fight). The one arguable exception in the season 5 episode “Old Soldiers”, in which more realistic sounds are heard when a few rounds are let loose.

Alongside X-Men, Spider-Man: The Animated Series (known for its particularly heavy censorship and restrictions) also excessively used laser weaponry. Many realistic guns were not allowed, and no firearms could shoot bullets, so instead they fired lasers complemented by "futuristic" sound effects. This often led to preposterous scenes in which ordinary policemen wielded bizarre, futuristic pistols, and the mere appearances of realistic-looking guns (as seen in "Tombstone" and "Day of the Chameleon") were pointed out as major exceptions. The most preposterous example has to be “Secrets of the Six” where, during a WWII flashback, Captain America is leads a crackdown on the Red Skull's Nazi infiltrators, which, upon being discovered, promptly pull out their standard issue 1943 model laser guns to shoot those pesky heroes.

If projectile-based weaponry existed in the present-day X-Men: Evolution, it was never used. Policemen would never draw their weapons. The army would either use non-lethal ordnance such as taser or tear gas, or escalate to laser rifles. Even civilians created their own improvised lasers when the need arose: in one episode, high-school graduate Duncan Matthews uses what is described as modified mining tools during his short lived anti-mutant terror campaign. One clear exception, mercifully, occurs during the World War II flashback sequence in “Project Rebirth”.

The Spectacular Spider-Man has cops and common criminals use guns which are meant to be realistic ones, but which are made to sound more like lasers. While a particular subset of DVD's was meant to make them sound like real guns (among other general changes, including additional footage, and the editing of the individual episodes of an arc into a pseudo-movie), only the first story arc got this treatment before the line was discontinued. Villains higher on the tech scale, incidentally, would occasionally use what were unambiguously meant to be lasers, or some other form of Abnormal Ammo.

Special beams aside, Kim Possible would often have the police, secret agents, and other authorities be completely unarmed. The base defenders at Area 51 have rifles, in one episode, but they never fire; their appearance might well be an oversight.

In the episode "The Tomato from the Black Lagoon", Zoltan and the Gang of Five were piloting warplanes and attacking Chad, F.T., and Tara with live ammo. Chad tells Tara that kids should not use guns, have to use their fingers instead!

In another episode, "Streets of Ketchup", after Chad and Tara gets assaulted by tomatoes, Chad reaches into a shrub, and whips out a pair of guns. The Censor Lady raises a fuss, but Chad tells her that they are water guns, loaded with salt water. However, the water sprayed onto her reveals a well-delivered Take That:

Tara: A tomato!

Chad: Nah, a prune... now we're gonna hear from the Prune Board!

Although Static Shock mostly plays the trope straight, exceptions were occasionally made for particularly serious episodes, such as the Pilot (where Virgil is almost goaded into murdering a tormentor), an episode dealing with school violence, and another dealing with his mother's death.

Unlike its Bruce Timm-produced predecessor, The Batman played this trope straight. While it's unclear what kind of ammunition the weapons used by the GCPD and other criminals used—the more-graphic movie and the series proper are somewhat inconsistent in this regard—the guns themselves were very sci-fi looking, in a way that made them look way out of place in a world that tried to remain somewhat realistic.

Averted in The Batman vs. Dracula, though - at one point, Batman is pursued by a SWAT team whose guns are quite clearly firing bullets, even though they look rather sci-fi-ish.

Teen Titans plays this trope straight, although the fact that the world established in the series appears to be different from our own in several key ways means their use is not as jarring as some other cases.

Godzilla: The Series, is actually an interesting example of lasers being acquired during the series. In early episodes, real guns (including M16s) are used. During the "Monster Wars" story arc, the invading aliens end up leaving some of their Energy Weapons on Earth when they retreat. Soon after that, lasers show up as military weapons, in all likelihood reverse-engineered from the alien ones—unfortunately, they prove to be as effective as the projectile weaponry.

Everyone in the various Ben 10 series uses lasers. While it make sense for characters who are connected to the numerous alien races that are a series mainstay, the fact that regular people—such as the security detail assigned to protect a to-be-released videogame—also use them without explanation can be rather off-putting, if you care about stuff like that.

While the trope was initially in full effect (with some exceptions, such as a scene involving a wild west shoot-out) in the early episodes of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003), more realistic-looking guns started appearing as the series went on. The second season featured stylized guns which shot ambiguous-looking ammo which appeared to be designed for maximum plausible deniability, which evolved into more realistic automatic weaponry in the third season. It wasn't until the fourth season that handguns began appearing. While laser weapons did appear throughout the series (and far more frequently than "real" firearms), the producers attempted to justify them by showing that they were only accessible to the particularly well-funded; however, once an alien invasion left a large amount of advanced ordnance lying around, a black market was created, and street gangs began using them as well.

The original Ninja Turtles cartoon, on the other hand, went in the opposite direction. While initial seasons featured characters using what where meant to be “real” firearms (although the animation, as was typical for the show, was rather inconsistent in this regard, showing what looked like lasers at the same time lines like “eat hot lead” and “the bullets aren't stopping them!” were being said) by its final season you'd have security guards using some very sci-fi-looking lasers.

While early episodes of Transformers Generation 1 featured humans using normal guns, the fact that the writers take steps to justify the existence of energy weapons (via the use of a short montage where Chip and leading industrialists are shown "developing weapons for humanity to combat the Decepticon threat" or some such line), which then completely replace conventional weaponry, suggest that this trope may have been an issue.

Transformers Prime seems to zigzag with this trope at times. On one hand, Agent Fowler's helicopter is armed with what looks like a pretty accurately-modeled M230 Chaingun, and when he fires it at Laserbeak in the third episode, it clearly makes gun-like sounds and even runs out of ammo. When it appeared again in episode 17, however, the same gun fired bullets with a laser sound effect. It's even weirder with MECH's various weapons; Silas' personal chopper clearly fires some kind of energised projectile, while his goons carry futuristic assault rifles that fire both laser-sounding bullets (which are animated like normal gunfire and make obvious ricochet noises against Breakdown and Bulkhead's armour) and blue, energy-like stun blasts from a secondary barrel. Meanwhile, ordinary US troops carry normal-looking M16s, but never fire them. In Nemesis Prime, we get some rather awkward scenes where said troops point their M16s at targets, but all actual gunfire comes from offscreen, and sounds like lasers; it's implied that they're firing their rifles at the eponymous MECH robot, but not once is anyone shone pulling the trigger of their weapon on-camera. The lack of projectile weapons is especially baffling given that the show has no problems with Transformers dismember eachother with blade weapons.

Danny Phantom plays the trope straight. While the protagonists' weapons were designed to fight ghosts (who would naturally be immune to bullets) no other characters appear to carry firearms. Although it is rare for most of the scenarios to make sense for firearms to be used. Most of Danny's battles are with ghosts, and take place in a highschool. The few humans he actually fight invariably use super science and plasma based weapons.

Exo Squad's inconsistent animation meant that EVERYTHING fired lasers, no matter what it looked like or what it fired a second ago. That grapefruit thing on the right arm of the Neosapian mook armor was alternately a laser blaster, a missile, a club, or some kind of bomb depending on what the animators felt like doing. Scopes fired lasers, missile launchers fired lasers, odd pointy bits that don't really look anything like a weapon sometimes fired lasers. If it was on the arm of an e-frame, it shot a laser at some point. However, closeup shots of weapons sometimes show belts of linked ammunition and ejected bullet casings.

In The Adventures of Sam and Max: Freelance Police, the title characters never got to use their guns, but they did use all manner of explosives and blunt instruments, and the occasional flamethrower. Even so, the roach terrorist at the end of "Bad Day On The Moon" uses a realistically-drawn AK, although it's never fired.

Young Justice toys with this. Some villains are armed with lasers and otherworldly weaponry, but soldiers and thugs still carry standard firearms.

Played straight with Arsenal. In the comics, he has a pair of handguns and other realistic firearms, but in the show he simply uses a laser built into his bionic arm. Of course, chances are the censors wouldn't have reacted too kindly to a teenage superhero using realistic real world firearms to begin with.

Deathstroke carries a very real looking pistol, but never does more with it than intercept a thrown grenade, and dramatically cock it in another character's face before it was knocked from his hand.

Both played straight and averted in Wolverine and the X-Men. Most instances of firearms tended to be cartoonish lasers, but realistic handguns were infrequently seen as well.

Odd example in Iron Man: Armored Adventures. Some episodes show what are clearly normal firearms (complete with bullets and discarded shell casings) but play cartoonish laser sounds when the guns actually fire.

The American Street Fighter animated series has an episode featuring a Chinese drug cartel using laser guns. Also in the "Final Fight" episode, Belger uses a wheelchair equipped with missiles and lasers instead of his bowgun.

The fantasy world of Perim in Chaotic featured this trope via Fantasy Gun Control: while the Tribes can churn out arsenal fulls of flamethrowers, hand-held water cannons, and boom sticks powered-by the classical element air, gunpowder-based firearms appear to be completely alien to their world. Likewise, in the episode "Chaotic Crisis" featured a conflict between the creatures of Perim and real-world humans, who, instead of using the expected arsenal, instead used tanks with flamethrowers.

Not-quite-a-gun example: in the cartoons based on The Legend of Zelda, Link couldn't kill the enemies by stabbing them with his sword like in the games. Instead, he had to defeat them by shooting them with the Sword Beams — which are also in the games, but are only available at full health and thus aren't used as much as regular stabbing. In one episode, Link foolishly trades his sword for a fancier one which, he discovers at a critical moment, does not shoot laser beams. This renders him entirely defenseless despite the fact that the replacement is still a fully functional sword.

The Powerpuff Girls featured real guns during the first two seasons, with cops, robbers, commandos, and even Miss Bellum wielding threatening, bullet-firing weapons with appropriate sound-effects. One episode even points out that the girls are bullet-proof, with Blossom wondering why criminals even try as bullets bounce off of her. This changes in the third season, in an episode which shows policemen fire fully-functional pistols and machineguns which are inexplicably coloured fire-hydrant red, and eventually the trope is played straight, with a bank robber shooting at the girls with a laser pistol.

Parodied in South Park, where George Lucas and Steven Spielberg set out to release remakes of ET and the Indiana Jones movies where all the guns have been digitally replaced with walkie-talkies. This is later taken a step further lampshaded when the boys are being held captive by real soldiers, all armed with machine gun sized walkie-talkies.

Justified at great length in The Zeta Project. Two things: one, bullets strong enough to damage Zeta will probably destroy him and the antagonists have orders to capture him in-tact, as he's a very expensive piece of equipment. Two - and Agent Bennett goes off at great length on Agent West for this - real bullets will ricochet off of Zeta because his body is built specifically to deflect bullets, and therefore endangers innocent bystanders. Bennett, despite being a Jerk Ass most of the time, enforces the no bullet firing guns rule based on this. The only time anyone uses a real gun is when Agent Lee goes up against a serial killer/mercenary who had tried to kill her earlier. The rest of the time, they used energy based weapons. Zeta adheres to Thou Shalt Not Kill so strictly that he refuses to even carry a gun.

While Generator Rex generally has little problem with featuring conventional firearms, these are occasionally—and inexplicably—absent in episodes where their use would actually be effective against the threat of the week, making the show an example of the first listed version of the trope. The best example probably occurs in the second episode, which involves an outbreak of humanoid E.V.O.s who are individually rather weak; Providence is initially seen trying to contain the monsters using net guns and other non-lethal weaponry, and after this proves ineffective, White Knight gives the order to escalate, skipping automatic weaponry and heading straight into weapons of mass destruction.

In Doug's 1st Movie, Mr. Bluff has hired the police who are armed with high powered assault rifles and orders them to shoot the monster once it's released from the giant Valentine box, at the last minute the kids switch the monster with Roger's robot and they fire upon it but for some reason they fire lasers.

While The Legend of Korra explicitly takes place in a fantasy setting where Elemental Powers are commonly used, the Equalists field a variety of mostly-plausible early 20 century-styled weapons and vehicles which, at times, seem rather awkward due to their complete absence of any kind of projectile weaponry. The most shining example comes in the finale, whereupon we witness the introduction of WWI-esque biplanes; while they carry bombs and torpedoes, they conspicuously lack machine guns, and when it actually comes down to aerial combat between planes, we are treated to the bizarre sight of one of them launching bolas that wrap around and immobilise the opposing plane's propeller. Meanwhile, the friendly United Forces' battleships have what appear to be naval cannons, but are actually just tubes that amplify the power and range of Firebending attacks.

Due to the tragic shooting incident that took place at a screening of The Dark Knight Rises, the gun designs in Beware the Batman will be changed to appear less realistic.[1] Once the show actually premiered, though, it became obvious that the change was only cosmetic— the pistols look like futuristic blasters, but sound like normal guns and fire actual bullets. This is also shown with heavier weapons like Alfred's rifle that has the same look, but still acts like a real rifle.

Realistic firearms appear in Darkwing Duck, used by many criminal elements and law enforcement bodies. However Darkwing himself relies primarily on gadgets like his trademark gas gun and Abnormal Ammo on the Thunderquack. Laser weapons and other odd types also appear.

Primarily averted on TaleSpin. Realistic side and longarms (Colt .45-style pistols, Thompson Submachine Guns, etc) are used on the ground, Don Karnage's pirates and Cape Suzette fighter planes are armed with very realistic machine guns, and the cliff guns defending Cape Suzette from outside threats fire realistic anti aircraft artillery. And then you have the Tembrians flinging bathtubs at enemy aircraft...

Realistic guns also appear on DuckTales (with also the occasional laser and other heavy fictionalized weapons).

Seeing as they're the size of, well, mice, weapons used by the Rescue Rangers were pretty universally of the Abnormal Ammo variety. Real guns do make an appearance, however, though given the scales involved generally functioned as artillery so were much less imitable in this context.

This trope was, ironically, averted by a bizarre case of Executive Meddling in the case of The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes!. Originally, the episodes set in World War II were supposed to actually be the Marvel Universe conception of World War II, Nazis and all. Realistic firearms were also called for. However, according to original showrunner Christopher Yost, Disney's BSP unit made them a deal — they could either have Nazis in WW2, but they had to use lasers, or they could have realistic firearms but no Nazis. Hence Captain America, the Howling Commandos and James Howlett all shoot hot lead at HYDRA, who are apparently helping unseen, unmentioned Nazis conquer Europe.

This is mostly averted in Cyber Six. The Fixed Ideas use rocket launchers on the titular character frequently, and in the second episode they're seen digging through a stash machine guns and heavy artillery they stole from the mafia. Detective Enrique uses an odd kind of Ray Gun when he's brainwashed into hunting Cyber Six, though.

Surprisingly averted in Regular Show, a Cartoon Network series of the 2010s. Police and criminals can be seen using real guns that fire real bullets. In fact two episodes involved shootouts, with robotic criminals getting injured and killed by the police.

Played straight in an upcoming episode when a gun was Bowdlerized by CN into something more family-friendly. This only spawned more conspiracy theories that current network management are major Moral Guardians.

Another straight example is seen in "Guy's Night 2", in which the FBI agents pursuing Thomas use laser weaponry, both in the form of small arms and helicopter turrets. Fans are still convinced this is because current network management is comprised of moral guardians.

The ''Pink Panther'' cartoon "Super Pink" features a scene were the Panther is shot in the face by a crook's gun, which results in the Panther getting temporary ash face. Some versions of "Super Pink" redrew the scene so the crook has a water pistol, and the Panther just winds up being soaked.

In one episode of Courage the Cowardly Dog, Courage accompanies Eustace on a hunting trip. Eustace is armed with a laser rifle and unsuccessfully tries to shoot at deer—one of whom also has his own laser rifle.

Parodied once in The Amazing World of Gumball with a criminal who tries to rob a convenience store with a spoon, freaking out several other characters as if it were an actual firearm. The cop who ends up arresting him just finds the whole thing hilarious though.

Most of the time, police in Invader Zim simply have no weapons at all, leading to a strange scene where Zim ran into a bank full of police officers and one can hear numerous Dramatic Gun Cocks with no visible source. They've also been shown using stranger things such as mustard bottles and a laser that looks like it's made of twisting pipes.

Everybody has lasers in Phantom 2040, since it's the future. Surprisingly, in one episode a minor character dies on screen due to being shot by those lasers.

SWAT Kats zigzags the trope: while normal guns and rifles, as used by the Enforcers and assorted villains, are laser-based and generally look that way, though Commander Feral's handgun looks a little more realistic. The SWAT Kats' arsenal, on the other hand, is intended to be as non-lethal as possible. Therefore, they tend to lean towards Abnormal Ammo- the varieties of missiles used in the TurboKat range from being able to deploy buzzsaws, to producing electrical or flame impacts. They rarely ever fired a standard missile- which was lampshaded when a standard was fired by a button marked "Plain Old Missile". In addition, they also had a cement gatling gun equipped; their ammo in their Glovatrixes and other vehicles tended to be scaled-down versions of their TurboKat armaments.

Podcasts

This trope is the reason we have an advisory for guns on RFG (Radio For Gamers).

Real Life

Non-lethal weapons could be considered this, in the sense that they are designed with the intention of deterring escalation of violence (e.g. riots and personal self-defense) without killing. Though it should be noted that those in law enforcement prefer the term "less lethal" than "non-lethal" as they can be misused or, under certain circumstances, cause accidental casualties (e.g. Tasers in combination with water or certain amounts of pepper spray).

Alternative Title(s):Where Did They Get Lasers, Family Friendly Firearm

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